The Bangladesh Cricket Board is all set to take legal action against their Test and T20I skipper Shakib Al Hasan. This is done after Shakib Al Hasan signed a deal with Telecom company Grameenphone, which is against the terms and conditions of the board.
Bangladesh board president Nazmul Hasan has stated that they are going to take stern action against Shakib Al Hasan if he is not able to provide a satisfactory reply. Grameenphone had announced on October 22 that they have roped in Hasan as their brand ambassador to inspire and build an empowered digital society.
“He cannot make this agreement [with a telecom company] and why he cannot make this agreement is clearly stated in our contract paper,” BCB president Nazmul Hasan told Bengali daily Kalerkantho on Saturday (October 26)
“Robi [Telecom] was our title sponsor and Grameenphone did not bid and instead they grabbed few cricketers by paying them TK One or Two Crores. What happened in the end? The board lost TK 90 Crores in three years,” he said.
Shakib Al Hasan is in troubled waters.
Hasan had penned down the deal with Grameenphone after the country’s cricketers had gone for a strike. However, the strike eventually ended on October 23. Meanwhile, Bangladesh cricketers cannot join Telecom company according to BCB’s players’ agreement.
“Some players gained but the board had to suffer. It cannot happen. So they are informed about it on paper. I think even from the ministry they are told not to do any agreement with the telecom company without informing them while it is there in our contract paper. Then how come he does this agreement without informing us. And look at the timing. It was done when there was no cricket [due to strike]. Look at the audacity,” he said.
“We are going into legal action and we cannot spare anyone in this regard. In fact, we will ask for compensation. We will seek compensation from the company as well as from the player. I heard about it [on October 23] and asked to the sent legal notice to Grameenphone to claim compensation. I asked to send a letter to Shakib for an explanation. We must give him a chance to show he didn’t break the rule. To us, it seemed that it was something like ‘give a damn to the board’ and if that is the case we will take tough action,” he added.
Meanwhile, BCB chief executive Nizamuddin Chowdhary stated that they were not aware of the deal as Shakib Al Hasan didn’t seek any permission.
Hasan didn’t seek any permission.
‘We were not aware of his [Shakib’s] deal with Grameenphone,” said Nizamuddin while talking to Cricbuzz. “Usually what happens is we don’t encourage players to have any commercial deal with a company that can have a conflict with the national sponsors,” said Nizamuddin.
“Right now we have Unilever as our national team sponsors but the deal is expected to end soon. If any of our players are endorsing any telecom company, then the other telecom companies will not be interested to bid for the national team when our present deal is over with Unilever,” he said.
Bangladesh is all set to tour India for three-match T20I series and two Test matches.